Windows 10 System image on bootable USB

So, lots of questions after reading and googling for hours. I wonder if I understood something at all but here is what I would like to do and what I'm not sure about.

Task: backup complete Win 10 System disk (dedicated SSD) in a way it can be restored in case the SSD suddenly decides to stop working again. Ideally as an automated process so that image would be generated in predefined intervals or when certain events happen, triggered by them.

I thought, have the image created by one of the free tools (macrium, easus, aomei…) onto a USB flash drive and use my other USB drive with a bootable Win 10 Pro image to boot in case the boot drive goes bye bye and tell Win 10 during install to use the other USB drive with the System image to restore.

But I guess that doesn't work, right? The System image created by those free tools is probably in a proprietary format and needs the corresponding tool that created it to restore that image, right? So that means I need to reinstall Win 10 Pro again, then install that image creation tool and use it to re-install my System image?

Or is there a way a bootable USB can be created containing the System image file and it'll be "restored" back to a drive and be a fully functional Win 10 version without having to install Win 10 stock first, then my configured Win 10 System image after?

Or how do you guys do that? I just want a quick and reliable way to restore my customized and working Win 10 System in case the drive breaks or the current installation is f-ed up.

1.

The System image created by those free tools is probably in a proprietary format and needs the corresponding tool that created it to restore that image, right?

Yes, that is pretty much it. (Though some of the image formats can opened by other tools.) Paragon, for example, has several image formats to choose from:



I just used Paragon as an example. Unfortunately, their current FREE offering is rather limited. There are several others to choose from. A lot depends on your personal requirements. Some are much simpler to use than others, there are some differences in features, etc.



2.

So that means I need to reinstall Win 10 Pro again, then install that image creation tool and use it to re-install my System image?

No, you don't have to reinstall win10. You just boot the recovery media ( which the imaging tools will create for you). From that booted media you just restore the image. No need to reinstall win10 first.

If you use 3rd party tools, the first thing you do is get it to create boot media for you. Usually on a usb stick.

If you use windows own system image program, then you already have boot media. The windows system image can be restored from winre.wim or boot.wim in the installation media.


I recommend Aomei, as it is very easy to use. That is particularly important for some. If you have a special requirement, for example to exclude certain files/folders from a backup image - then you need to look elsewhere.

Alright, thanks a lot for that, clears up most.

Can any of the tools (free or not) you know create a recovery boot usb medium and store the created system image on the same usb? Or do I always have to have those two separate.

I would store the system images on any of the NAS but I fear the recovery boot medium wont mount any of those and can read from them....

loungebob said:

Can any of the tools (free or not) you know create a recovery boot usb medium and store the created system image on the same usb?

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Yes, that is standard. You will need a large usb stick. Let the imaging program create it's boot media on a large usb stick.

Then create the image from the program within windows and select the usb stick as the place to save the image. It might take a while as speed will be limited by usb transfer rates.

It is feasible if you only want to create a new image once a month to replace the earlier image on the usb stick. The advantge is you can carry the usb around with you.

If you are going to be imaging very frequently, or if you want to retain several images, it is better to store the images on a hard drive.

You could do both, of course.

Sounds to me like you might want to consider a USB hard drive or USB SSD as your backup method instead of a USB flash drive. I have a 256GB SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure that has a 1 GB fat32 partition on it containing the bootable Macrium Reflect rescue media. Then the rest is an NTFS partition that contains my backup files and whatever else I want to stick in there.

Yeah, this. And what @SIW2 and @dalchina said.

I just wanted to have an automated process like my doc/data backup that goes to cloud and NAS.

But I might as well go the external SSD through USB 3 route. Thanks all!

I’m on a 10Gbit fiber, shouldnt be a problem ;-)

loungebob said:

I’m on a 10Gbit fiber, shouldnt be a problem ;-)

Hi there
Trouble is what happens if you need to restore and you don't have Internet access at that point.

That's why I'd have a local copy available even if you have cloud storage.

Two backups are always better than 1 anyway -- if one fails the other will probably work --chance of 2 backups to different media both being defective at the same time is not that likely.

Cheers
jimbo